Empowering Our Youth with embedding Indigenous culture in everyday learning and activities, is our children’s birth right.
All Australian children, from the earliest age, deserve to learn about our country’s first nations people and the rich and diverse cultures that continue to this day.
By embedding cultural learning in the early years education sector, educators and teachers can impart:
- The wonder of Indigenous knowledge;
- Support Aboriginal children’s sense of identity and belonging; and
- Promote a culture of understanding and respect towards cultural diversity for all children.
It’s important to engage with the culture – have a personal connection and gain an understanding of the culture and build relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Aboriginal Sensitive Centre
We are an Aboriginal Sensitive Centre, honouring the land in which we were given here at Bright kids, by understanding and paying respects to the traditional custodians of past, present and emerging. Collaborating with Elders with our ‘Empowering our Youth’ inspired program.
We begin each day in our multi purpose built yarning circle, earthing and reciting our ‘Acknowledge of Country’ before heading inside to commence our learning day. Our yarning circle is also ultilised for dreamtime stories, group learning and other intentional teaching purposes.
As a aboriginal sensitive Centre, we celebrate our native culture by;
- Naming each room after an Indigenous animal,
- Wearing with pride an Aboriginal inspired designed uniform; and
- Creating a calendar of indigenous events that are modified experience’s for every age group.
Empowering Our Youth program
The Yugambeh language people are the traditional custodians of the land located in south-east Queensland and north-east New South Wales, now within the Logan City, Gold Coast, Scenic Rim, and Tweed City regions whose ancestors all spoke one or more dialects of the Yugambeh Language.
Our foundation program consists of:
- Relating extended knowledge of Australian native animals to our program;
- Learning more about our Yugambeh language as part of the ‘ Kombumerri tribe’;
- Matching the Yugambeh animal name with it’s English partner and picture; and
- Using their fingers in the permanent nature set up, to create animal tracks, in the sand.
Over the past few weeks the children have engaged in several Aboriginal cultural-related learning opportunities by:
Enjoying planned and spontaneous adventures– from listening to and reading Dreamtime stories, then recreating these special stories with different art moments with rainbow birds and playdough butterflies. This has given the group many follow-up opportunities to incorporate yoga poses on our resilience mornings and make giant aboriginal symbols while in outdoor play in the sandpit.
Integrating technology -Visual opportunities for the children to view dancing techniques and watch Dreamtime stories told by elders of our community. As an extension to our visual learning we filtered some Aboriginal music through the speakers to the outside yard and improvised movement and animal actions. The children thought this was great fun.
Aboriginal games– As a group we researched some Aboriginal games as part of our participation in Children’s Day. This was such a great experience as we realised that the games, they play are very similar to the games we play such as:
- Borna Jokee is a game similar to dodge ball;
- Birray is similar to hide & seek; and
- Brajerack is similar to duck duck goose but with a twist. It is an inside game where everyone in the circle is blindfolded and one friend walks around making buzzing noises and the blindfolded children try and ‘catch the fly, so much fun.
Supporting an Aboriginal culture at home
- Reading Aboriginal books and Dreamtime stories as there are many books by Aboriginal authors covering all aspects of life.
- Watch Aboriginal television, the SBS channel supports many different programs and past stories
- Buy and listen to Aboriginal music. Australia has a rich variety of Aboriginal musicians playing many different styles from lyrical songs to hard rock or hip hop. Check out song lyrics to learn what they sing about.
- Visit galleries and museums. Learn about Aboriginal culture from Aboriginal people’s artworks. Read what the artist intended and find out how topics changed over time
That’s all this month from Miss Tracy and the Sea Turtles (Pingin) children.
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